It's a widely held impression that the Old Masters were exactly that: masters, so much Eastern Samoa da Vinci and Vermeer, WHO whitewashed in flawlessly precise freehand. There are savants with steady hands, nary call into question. But there are other techniques to moot, which David Hockney (an artist of our age who as wel pioneered iPad art), expounds on in Secret Noesis: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, in which atomic number 2 lays out exactly how European painters used mirrors and lenses to create their compositionally perfect portraits.

That surprised Golan Heights Levin, an interaction designer and a technical school performance creative person of sorts–and one of Fast Company's hoi polloi shaping the future of design in 2012. Why? "Mostly because it seemed like a truth, just no of my colleagues talked about it," atomic number 2 tells Co.Design. Levin teaches at Andrew Carnegie Mellon and also sits on the admission staff. "All these students come to me from high school, and they think art equals painting, and painting equals realistic painting. They're being set up to believe they need divine powers."

Pablo Garcia, an art professor at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, has been hip to the (disputable) idea for some old age and has amassed an extensive collection of optics. Helium offered to let Levin try out a television camera lucida, one of the tools Hockney says the Old Masters ill-used to capture their subjects more realistically. Levin loved it, and the duo decided to pretend a 21st-hundred version.


A photographic camera lucida is a simple machine: A half-size prism reflects the image of the subject and then the viewer can insure their own hand, advantageous the epitome, and decipher a more accurate interpreting onto the paper. The effect isn't far off from the Google Crank video demos we've been sighted. There are layers of images available in your line of mickle–for you to use in approximately smart way. But the only lucidas tranquillize available are collectibles, and run a price tag in the north of $300–more than Levin and Garcia believed college students would pay. As it turns out, manufacturing just several lucidas costs $20,000, but from each one additional optical prism costs just pennies.

Which is wherefore the NeoLucida sells for $30. It's utter for Kickstarter. Since launching the product on English hawthorn 8, Levin and Garcia are already hearing from hoi polloi WHO missed out on the first 2,500 they made available. But unequal most other runaway Kickstarter hits, this isn't–or wasn't–supposed to be a business. "This whole affair is a performance, or an intervention, or just graphics," Levin says. Fortuitously, the project had enough involve and interest so that just two days after going live, Levin and Garcia unchangeable that there will be an unlimited second production run, conducted by job manufacturers.

The effects of getting the NeoLucidas out into the market should be interesting. Animators, filmmakers, and diagram-mappers are all groups that Levin and Garcia quotatio As logical customers. Because for all the advancements we get with pictorial illustration and picture taking, masses still want roll upfield their sleeves and line look-alike an old master.

The envision has already raised about $400,000, faraway beyond its goal of $15,000. Support the campaign here.